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If you are not reading this on a screen then you hold in your hands one of humanity’s world-changing...
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If you are not reading this on a screen then you hold in your hands one of humanity’s world-changing inventions. Yet that power has not been matched by fame: paper delights in self-modesty, pointing you to the words on its surface and so acting only as a stage for ideas and arguments that have changed history.
Without that stage, the written and printed word would have attracted only a small audience.All the alternatives to paper commonly used throughout our pre-digital history have been too rare, too heavy, too expensive or too inconvenient to deliver words to a wide number of people,let alone a mass readership
Paper has enabled writers to reach unprecedented(前所未有) numbers throughout history.Among them were the Buddhist missionary translators from South and Central Asia who brought their religion to China almost two thousand years ago. The paper age has its outstanding personalities: Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose collected works when combined fill more than 200 volumes.
For many of us, it has only been the rise of digital media that has finally opened our eyes to papers striking existence everywhere. Of course, paper has found thousands of roles for itself,writing aside. Your bedside lamp glows through a paper cover and the cups in the office coffee machine are made from paper. It can be as common and practical as a bus ticket or it can be treasured and expensive as the carrier of the worlds best-loved painting.
It is clear that many predictions of paper's extinction have been premature-and greatly overstated. Much of the 400 million tons of paper produced annually is absolutely necessary to our way of life. The bigger question, of course, concerns the one role paper has had that has been transformative for the world. namely as the carrier of written or printed text. Already,it is leaving much of the difficult work of words to digital media, and many of its centuries-old roles have already been largely transferred to the screen. There is also a sense in which paper has itself become a subject, rather than simply a medium. This began to become clear in art several decades ago. as paper became not simply the backdrop (背景) for art but, in a few cases, the stuff of the art itself.
This doesn’t mean that papers uses as a vehicle for words will end, but it does signal a slowing down. More than that, it signals that paper's greatest virtues are no longer good enough.Those virtues enabled unprecedented periods of cultural expansiveness. just as they encouraged knowledge, beliefs and ideas to move further down the socio-cconomic ladder. Yet such transformative qualities are shared by paper's digital opponent(对手), and paper can no longer compete on speed of delivery, scale of information immediately available, or ease of access.
Paper's historic dynamism(活力)has received its first great challenge and, in many aspects,it appears to be losing Nostalgia(怀旧)simply dismisses paper to a museum piece. But there are reasons to think that the dynamism that paper has exhibited over some 20 centuries will not be transferred totally to digital media. There are a few practical reasons. Electric power is always needed for digital media, of course. More importantly, anything online can, potentially, be hacked into. Your own reading choices can be viewed from the other side of the world. Even what you write can be viewed and changed or deleted. But it is the ownership of knowledge that matters most. As Amazon recently reminded a kindle reader who had lost the text of a book he was reading. you do not "own" your books on Kindle, as you own a physical book. You simply have the right to access them.
The digital revolution certainly provides unprecedented access to knowledge. But it is access only. Text that you can hold, shelve and own, due to paper, will always have a magic all its own.
1.Why does paper not have well-deserved fame?
A. Much information is available on a screen.
B. It takes great delight in being modest.
C. Only a small crowd enjoys the benefits of it.
D. It always guides readers to focus more on itself.
2.The underlined part in Paragraph 4 implies that the digital media .
A. ignores the existence of paper
B. promotes the wide use of paper
C. replaces the functions of paper
D. helps us realize the roles of paper
3.One reason why paper won' t come to an end is that .
A. it is being mass-produced
B. it is more than a medium
C. it has a centuries-old role
D. it is a well-known invention
4.What’s the purpose of mentioning the best virtues of paper in Paragraph 6?
A. To show its fast development.
B. To prove its unchanged strength.
C. To indicate its loss of competitiveness.
D. To bring back its past brilliance.
5.What is the biggest problem the digital media face?
A. It depends on electric power.
B. Personal privacy is easy to leak.
C. Users only have the right to use.
D. The joy of reading is hard to feel.
6.What is the best title for the passage?
A. The History of Paper
B. The Power of Paper
C. The Development of Paper
D. The Application of Paper
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